Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) is an emerging clinical imaging modality for characterizing the viscoelastic properties of soft biological tissues. MRE shows great promise in the noninvasive diagnosis of various diseases, especially those associated with soft tissue changes involving the extracellular matrix, cell density, or fluid turnover including altered blood perfusion – all hallmarks of inflammation from early events to cancer development. This review covers the fundamental principles of measuring tissue viscoelasticity by MRE, which are based on the stimulation and encoding of shear waves and their conversion into parameter maps of mechanical properties by inverse problem solutions of the wave equation. Technical challenges posed by real-world biological tissue properties such as viscosity, heterogeneity, anisotropy, and nonlinear elastic behavior of tissues are discussed. Applications of MRE measurement in both humans and animal models are presented, with emphasis on the detection, characterization, and staging of diseases related to the cascade of biomechanical property changes from early to chronic inflammation in the liver and brain. Overall, MRE provides valuable insights into the biophysics of soft tissues for imaging-based detection and staging of inflammation-associated tissue changes.

中文翻译：

---

磁共振弹性成像概括：软组织粘弹性的断层扫描成像，用于检测和分期疾病，重点是炎症


磁共振弹性成像 （MRE） 是一种新兴的临床成像方式，用于表征软生物组织的粘弹性。MRE 在各种疾病的无创诊断中显示出巨大的前景，尤其是那些与涉及细胞外基质、细胞密度或液体周转（包括血液灌注改变）的软组织变化相关的疾病——从早期事件到癌症发展的所有炎症标志。本文综述了用 MRE 测量组织粘弹性的基本原理，这些原理基于剪切波的刺激和编码，并通过波动方程的逆问题解将其转换为机械性能的参数图。讨论了现实世界生物组织特性（如组织的粘度、异质性、各向异性和非线性弹性行为）带来的技术挑战。介绍了 MRE 测量在人类和动物模型中的应用，重点是与肝脏和大脑中从早期到慢性炎症的生物力学特性变化级联反应相关的疾病的检测、表征和分期。总体而言，MRE 为软组织生物物理学提供了有价值的见解，用于基于成像的炎症相关组织变化的检测和分期。